Hominus in Extremis
by RamblerGaelige
Summary: A massive twist in the lives of Maturin and Aubrey may have tragic consequences for both. Please read and review. Rated T for a bit of gore.
1. Chapter 1

_ HMS_ Surprise,_4 leagues north-northwest of Finisterre, 16 May1808. _

"Upon my word, Stephen," Jack Aubrey cried, invading the surgeon's cabin with a furious burst of exuberant goodwill, "it is six bells of the forenoon watch and here you are in your cot. This is a most unusual turn of events, I must say." He settled heavily onto a fragile stool and poked his great leonine head into Maturin's hammock.

Maturin lay within, fully dressed, skewering the low ceiling with implacable hatred. "Can you not," he addressed sternly to Jack, "enter a man's cabin without you should disturb him so thoroughly? I am trying to think. Cogito, ergo sum."

"Thinking may be the force behind your existence, my dear Stephen, but I prefer plain worrds. You look troubled, friend." Aubrey smacked a white-breeched knee. "Is it Killick's goose pie? Mowett's rhymes? Or, I dare say, have you found some new reptile that begs further scrutiny on a surface not subject to random tilting?" He guffawed obscurely.

Maturin's stare waxed reptilian indeed. "Jack. The situation is of dire gravity." He waved a pale bony hand irritably. "Fetch my chamber pot."

"I should think you're quite up to the task yourself-"

"I desire you to examine its contents. Look into it, I beg of you. Look."

Jack shrugged. "I cannot say but that I shan't find more than the young gentlemen's brains," he grinned, and directed his eyes to the white porcelain basin. But - the inside was not white, nor were they occluded with the normal detritus of the human body. The pot was part full of intensely red, clotty blood. Jack reeled, nearly tumbling from his seat, and turned nearly as white as the basin. "Upon my word! What - in God's name - whose - where - whose blood is that?" He smashed his hair back furiously and gulped air.

Maturin wafted his fingers coolly through the air. "It is my blood," he remarked laconically, watching his own hands with deep interest. "It came from my lungs."

"From your lungs?"

"Properly, only the left lung, from the upper lobe." He breathed heavily. "Do you recall our last Channel cruise, Jack?"

Aubrey rose from the milking stool and paced, avoiding having the basin, or Stephen, in his line of sight. "You were taken ill for three days, but refused all offers of aid or medicament."

"Exactly that."

"But why, Stephen? And what connection has it with - that?" Jack's head swam, and he groaned softly. "Oh, I am not certain I would like to know."

The physician harrumphed wryly. "You have seen fit to inquire as to the reasons behind my behaviour; I believe you should be made privy. Do regain your seat, Jack. You appear a mite unsteady."

"A touch of sea-sickness, I should think."

"Nonsense. You've not been sea-sick a day in your life." Maturin coughed wetly. "On the last Channel cruise, I was afflicted with a bothersome case of chills, cough, cold sweats, and fever. All this, you understand, is endemic during the winter in the general population. I was not overly concerned by my symptoms until I perceived an obvious decline in my desire for nourishment." Overhead, a bell rang out seven times. Stephen paused as heavy footsteps crossed the ceiling, which was, on its sunward surface, the quarterdeck. "This continued for several days. After a fortnight, I began to consider diagnostic possibilities beyond the ordinary catarrhs brought by cold weather. The particular cycle of my fever had bearing in my assessment." He steepled his fingers and mused silently.

"What possibilities? What cycle? Stephen, speak plainly. I am no man of science and I do not follow what you mean." Jack snapped his knuckles anxiously and shifted his considerable weight from one buttock to another - one buttock being all that the undersized stool could contain at once.

"Every day at four o'clock - eight bells in the noon watch - I became very feverish. I declined to attend tea in your cabin because of it - I gave you the excuse of having several new monographs on the Otaheite pawpaw which I was desperate to read." Maturin sighed deeply. "My suspicions are now fully corroborated by the noisome flood from my lungs. Jack, the symptoms I have described, especially the fever which rises at four o'clock, are the classic exertnal signs of phthisis."

"Bless you. The signs of what?"

"Decrease your morning brandy ration, Jack, and perhaps all will become clear. There can be no question of it; I have consumption."

_A/N: This was brought to you by Gaelige. What do you think? Should this be continued? Review, please! I admit the premise is a little weird. I use consumptives in my stories... well, almost all the time. Full reasons may be found at: http/ idea for "Hominum in Extremis" came from a rather loopy conversation at 2am (after having watched Master and Commander, Law and Order: SVU, and House) with my friend and co-writer. _

_Gaelige: Let's think of ways to improve Maturin. _

_Rambler: Salsa? Leonard Nimoy plus salsa equals an unstoppable force of excellence!_

_Gaelige: Ooh, I know! We could make him consumptive! _

_Both: cheer _


	2. Chapter 2

"I have consumption."

Silence rang in Maturin's cabin. The physician stared, emotionless, at the deck beams; Captain Aubrey buried his face in his great rough hands and let out a noise somewhere between a howl and a pained whimper. "What now, Stephen? What now?"

"I ask only that we continue as normal, for as long as such a charade is possible."

"How long-" Jack swallowed, and gaped. "How long can such a thing be carried on? This- consumption. One isn't jolly likely to recover, am I right?"

"Unfortunately, you are." Maturin sat up, slowly, wincing. "Even I cannot be certain how much time I have. The disease could become dormant, or I could very well suffer another haemorrhage tonight and bleed to death in its course."

"Oh, stop, stop!" Aubrey cried, flinging his hands out. "Do you feel the barest panic at knowing that you will die? You're as cold-blooded as one of your lizards, God save me!"

"Quiet, man. All of _Surprise _ will be down to see what calamity has befallen us, that you should shout so." An incongruous flicker of amusement fluttered across the doctor's cadaverous face. He pulled a watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. "Unless Killick has fallen to sloth in his habits, he will be rousing you in five minutes for luncheon. I suggest-"

"-that I return to my cabin so Killick might fuss over me like a nervous chicken?" The captain hooted raucously. "Come, come, I believe you are correct." He sprang up, dusting his breeches absently. "Do join me, Stephen, if you feel you are able."

"I shall be along in one quarter of an hour."

"Well enough, then." Aubrey strode briskly out of Maturin's cabin, slamming the door with his usual unfussy recklessness. He checked up and down the narrow, dank corridor and, finding nobody, sank to the floor, staring flatly at the salt-streaked wood a scant three feet from his nose.

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Stephen Maturin stood, barely, at his table, the same that held screaming wounded and occasionally, a dead man, in the midst of pitched battles. The table was never empty, even in the most abjectly calm of cruises; several ruffled books, a particularly odd specimen of crested seabird, and the remains of the physician's good blue coat were scattered willy-nilly over the scarred surface. The coat was a particular sorrow to Stephen; it had not held up terribly well in a sea-chest that had, belatedly, been discovered to be the headquarters of several squadrons of ordinary clothes moths. "It would have been some consolation if the moths had, at least, been a new species," he mused, gripping the table's edge for balance.

Death, he thought, was nothing but a great voyage. The captain stared it straight in the face every time he set sail, in battle, in disease, in accident. _Why then can I not understand it? This is a natural illness; I am a naturalist. But my work will not help me one jot, and I will die. _

Nearly unconsciously, he began to shake. The table rattled slightly under his hands, and a small brown bottle protruding from under his ravaged coat tapped upon the scratched wood.

"Of course," he whispered. "Laudanum, then..." He coughed once, twice, and flinched at the pain in his lungs. "There's only half a glass left, maybe less." Maturin held the bottle up to the light, and swore quietly when it leaped from his clumsy fingers and shattered on the cabin floor. Staring at it, he cursed again, a bit louder. But -

The great straw-wrapped demijohn, holding one gallon, was still half full. Stephen lifted it from its nest under a shelf. "I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb." He poured a glassful and tossed it back, admiring the lights reflected from the cup to the cabin's ceiling. "Oh, why not have another?" Pouring a second quickly, he drank it off in one practised gulp. A soft, sweet grey fog descended. _Merciful heavens, this is a lovely feeling. _ Against his better judgment, Maturin poured and drank another glass.

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_Well'a'now. Another chapter for you all - please read and review! I get to give a 5-minute informative speech about tuberculosis tomorrow, which I haven't even rehearsed.. I have a date with my bathroom mirror. Please review! Thanks! _

_Ash Phox: Stephen's a bloodless sort of fellow. I don't doubt that he could murder somebody, then sit down and eat a full meal. _

_Mary Anne Talbot: The above is what's next! Muahaha! Seriously though, thanks for the review. I hope you enjoy! _


	3. Chapter 3

"Killick," Jack bawled. "Preserved Killick, is the luncheon ready for eating?" He bowled through the chipped doors of the great cabin, damaged in countless storms and scuffles. Killick rubbed an already mirror-finished spoon with a dirty cloth and a spiteful glare. "Coming in when nothing's to rights and everything's dirty, making me look bad... Your good coat's in the wardrobe, sir; I sewed three buttons on _again..._" Killick sighed in an uncanny imitation of the late Mrs General Aubrey.

"Thankee Killick," Jack said absently. "Ahh, Mr Pullings!" he exclaimed, manifestly glowing at the sight of his old friend and first lieutenant, "Did I yet tell you the one about my mother-in-law and the badger?"

"And how she believed it was possessed, so tried to have the vicar in to dispose of it?" Pullings grinned as he shut the cabin door. "You never told me how it ended, sir."

"Well, she did have the vicar in, and she took him out to the spinney where the poor thing had its nest - Mr Mowett! Do come in; I was just telling Mr Pullings about my mother-in-law and how she nearly _badgered_ the vicar to death, ha! ha!" Captain Aubrey became consumed by a fit of hearty cackling, and struck Pullings briskly across the back, nearly knocking the young first lieutenant into the table.

Pullings grabbed the back of a chair barely in time to avoid a close meeting with Killick and a massive tureen. "Watch yerself," the steward growled. "Didn't slave over this for hours so a young pup like you could splash it over the cabin - which I'd have to slave over for hours getting clean again-"

"Sorry, Killick. What did happen when the vicar met the badger?"

"Well, he bent over the nest very carefully, like he were playing statues, and called down into it-" Jack affected a timid, nancyish voice- "'You creature, are you in there? I say again, are you in there?'"

"What next?" Mowett lifted the lid of the tureen and hastily replaced it when he met Killick's thundering glare.

"The badger rushed out and fastened its teeth to the vicar's ankle, and the vicar lit out across the field with the badger coming every step of the way! And he never would speak to my mother-in-law again. He believes she put the badger up to it after his rather avant-garde Palm Sunday sermon." The quarterdeck bell rang once, twice, eight times total, the last echoing sullenly. Jack put up one finger. "Listen to that. Hear the way the bell rings? We're coming into fog."

Mowett glanced up anxiously. "Sir, I understood that we were not far from the coast of Brittany."

"And so we are, and so I'll order less speed. But first - luncheon." Jack sat, swiftly followed by Pullings and Mowett, who had come off the forenoon watch and were visibly famished. "Madeira, Killick, if you please." Killick came forward with the bottle from his corner and stared in silent, grizzly contempt at both young officers, making perfectly obvious that he served them as a grim duty and not by his own choice. Aubrey jumped slightly. "But where is the doctor? Mr Mowett, did you perhaps pass him in the corridor?" _Great leaping cats_, he thought nervously, checking his pocketwatch. _One quarter of one hour, he said, and it has been one half._

"I'm sorry, sir, but I did not. Mr Pullings and I came down together, and the doctor's cabin door was shut. I knocked, but there came no answer. Perhaps the doctor is asleep, sir." Mowett gulped heartily at his wine.

"Ahh, perhaps, perhaps." Jack wrung his napkin unconsciously. "Mr Mowett, if you could pass the word for Mr Simmons, please."

"Sir? Mr Simmons the surgeon's mate?" Mowett's eyebrows lifted. "Yes, sir, of course." He vanished into the corridor, calling softly. "You there! Pass the word for Mr Simmons to the captain's cabin." He sat back down and stared at his Madeira.

"Forgive my intrusion, sir, but is something the matter with Doctor Maturin?" Pullings, concerned, leaned closer to Captain Aubrey.

Jack dropped his napkin and dived after it, ferretting about under the tablecloth. "No," he called in muffled tones. "The doctor is capitally well." _Cold-blooded liar, _he thought, snatching the napkin and regaining his chair with a shred of dignity. "Mr Mowett, dare I ask your opinion of the Madeira? You have fixed it with a rather inhospitable glare."

"The madeira is very fine, sir," Mowett mumbled insincerely, blushing. "If you will forgive me, sir, I feel quite indisposed. Please excuse my rudeness." Mowett rushed ungallantly from the table, sweating visibly. Pullings and Aubrey stared after in blank astonishment. The captain reached for Mowett's glass and sniffed. "Upon my word of honour, Mr Pullings. Mr Mowett's wine has had something added to it."

Pullings stood up, alarmed. "Has our wine been adulterated as well?"

Captain and first lieutenant stared in oblique horror at their brimming goblets of imported wine. A soft knock came at the cabin door.

Jack opened his mouth several times, quite unable to answer. He gulped, wetting his dry throat. "Enter."

A slender male with an off-centre neckcloth and a very untidy blond queue sidled through the door. He popped his knuckles anxiously, wrinkling his long and horselike nose. "You sent for me, sir?"

"Yes, Mr Simmons. We believe that a person or persons unknown has added some substance to the wine. Could you offer a medical opinion?" Jack plucked his glass of Madeira from the tabletop and handed it to the pale surgeon's mate, who put his nose to it and inhaled deeply. His eyebrow lifted.

"I couldn't say with exact certainty, sir, but I believe your wine has had croton oil added to it. Have either of you consumed any wine?" he asked, blinking protruberant grey eyes.

Jack stared at Pullings, who shook his head mutely and addressed Mr Simmons in trembling tones. "Neither myself nor the captain has, but Second Lieutenant Mowett had half a glass, as you can see. He fled the cabin in quite some hurry and sweating like Paddy's pig." He swallowed feebly. "Is croton oil - would it - would croton oil be likely to have deletrious effects upon Mr Mowett?"

Simmons shook his head, replacing Mowett's glass gingerly. "He cannot have consumed much, sir. As far as the known effects of croton oil - well! I should very well think that Mr Mowett is at the heads, and will be found there in considerable distress until the evening watch is rung." He coughed euphemistically, raising his eyebrows at Captain Aubrey. "He will recover, never you worry. I must ask, sir; have you any notion of how the croton oil came to be added to your wine?"

_Have you any notion of the doctor's indisposition, Mr Simmons? _Jack jumped, and smoothed his breeches nervously. "No, no. None whatsoever. I must confess that I wonder the same thing, Mr Simmons. Ha! ha! By my mother-in-law's petticoats, I should not be surprised if Killick had done it to revenge himself upon me for needing a button sewn on again." Grinning painfully, Jack paced to the window and stared out. "That is all, Mr Simmons. Thank you."

"I am glad to be of service, sir." Simmons vanished as unobtrusively as he had come, leaving Jack and Pullings in a brooding silence, the latter eyeing the former with concerned curiosity.

"Captain Aubrey - " Pullings paused and drummed the table pensively.

"Yes, Mr Pullings?"

"I cannot help but have misgivings, sir."

"Misgivings, Mr Pullings? Upon my word. Whatever might these misgivings concern?" Jack sighed, not budging from his rigid stance. _And Stephen has never come. _

"Sir, forgive my presumption, but if you asked Mr Simmons here to discuss the adulteration of the wine, then I am the Empress Josephine." Pullings sat down heavily, resting his chin awkwardly on one hand.

Jack chewed his lower lip against a thorough disintegration. Shedding his over-warm coat with undignified haste, he stepped ponderously to the table and sat opposite Pullings, feeling an irksome trickle of sweat cross the nape of his neck as he covered his face with both great florid hands. "Oh, red hell and death. Beelzebub's mother! Tom," Aubrey asked, uncovering his face and leaning tensely forward, "Have you been at leisure to observe Dr Maturin since our commission's start?"

Pullings raised an eyebrow, plainly set off-balance. "I cannot honestly say that I have - observed - the doctor at any intimate distance, sir. I did notice that he looked rather like he hadn't been eating properly. I recall jibing him over it just out of Portsmouth."

"I see. I see." Jack snatched up his wineglass, then set it down again at a horrified gesture from Pullings. "What I am about to tell you, Tom, you must never disclose to another living soul - or a dead one neither, as a living soul may be nearby to hear it. Is that plain as plain?"

"It is, Captain Aubrey." Pullings folded his arms somberly. "Has something untoward happened to the doctor?"

"Untoward? Great guts, Tom, he has not been spotted in flagrante delicto with a goat or a sheep or the Empress Josephine. No," Jack cried, leaping out of his chair and rummaging carelessly through his sea-chest, "It is ever so much more consequential than _that!" _Seizing an almost-full bottle of French brandy, booty from a previous commission's prize, he plumped down again, grinning malevolently at Pullings. "Mr Pullings, the doctor has become afflicted with an ancient and fatal malady, which made its first serious manifestation this morning."

Pullings's eyes widened. "Certainly, sir, you are having me on. It's.. impossible. Preposterous."

Jack swilled at the liquor willingly. "Certainly, Mr Pullings, I wish it were what you have said." He stoppered the bottle and stared at the tabletop. "No, Tom, I am not perpetuating some elaborate practical joke. Dr Maturin -" he gulped dryly, and passed a hand over his face. "He has the consumption. I thought to ask the advice of Mr Simmons - but I could never. As I was told in strictest confidence, I am telling you in stricter. Tell. No. One."

Pullings nodded slowly. "I und-" From the upper deck came a sudden and total chaotic clamour, of bells and the eager voices of men, of scurrying feet and the rumble of gun-trestles. The voice of the sailing master bawled out, one clear note above the general din.

"Beat to quarters!"

_A/N: Sorry to end that on a cliffhanger, but I'm late updating. I hope you all enjoy! _

_Keeper: That's why I accept anonymous reviews :P I'm not worthy of your glowing words, but thank you! _

_Latergator: Everybody needs a spare friend or three. Thank you for the review! _

_G.Eliot: I hope you'll get around to reading Chaps 2 and 3, as they are the continuation.. Thank you! _

_Ash Phox: Thank you so much! I've got fears that this chapter fell short of the mark - if it did, please alert me. At least I think I can be proud of "The Sheets." :P The speech went decently, but I was a bit over time and nobody understands medical terminology even if you explain it in plain English! Surely "a hardened mass of white blood cells and dead tuberculosis bacilli" is an adequately clear explanation of "tubercle"? _

_Mary Anne Talbot: Stephen is a lizard.. he's cold-blooded and dry and enjoys flicking his tongue at silly people. Perhaps he studies reptiles when he feels lonesome for his family :P Thank you for reviewing! _

_Sarince: I'm looking as lively as one who might be favourably compared to a sheet can :P School keeps me busy while my anti-tuberculosis medication (I have a dormant infection; I harbour germs but am not sick like Stephen) knocks me flat on my bum! Thank you for reviewing, and I hope you enjoy! _


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